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In 1989: the Berlin Wall came tumbling down, Mikhail Gorbachev was named Soviet leader, and George H.W. Bush assumed the Presidency. Paula Abdul, Bobby Brown and Debbie Gibson were burning up the music charts, and folks at home were tuning to “Seinfeld,” “The Simpsons” and “Baywatch” when they weren’t reading “The Joy Luck Club,” “A Time to Kill” or “7 Habits of Highly Effective People.” At the movie theater, to paraphrase Frank Sinatra, “it was a very good year.”  Here are ten 1989 movies that I think have aged particularly well. See if you agree.   

What happens after an actor or actress wins an Academy Award?   The assumption is that the performer’s career skyrockets. Offers come pouring in. The thespian’s price tag certainly rises. What had been the usual “on-and-off” career of the struggling working actor suddenly gets a lot more hectic; members of the paparazzi who may not have known him or her from Adam (or Eve) are suddenly camped out on their doorstep.  This is what often occurs when one of these statuettes ends up in your hands. But not always. 

This year, what do you say we switch things up and not dread the whole back-to-school business? No prodding the kids to plow through the summer-reading-list books they haven’t yet cracked. No bracing yourself for the logistical nightmare of getting your brood up, fed, dressed and off to their classrooms.

It’s nearly impossible to discuss a truly great movie without mentioning its musical score. Can you  honestly ponder the Spielberg classic “Jaws” (1975) without hearing those relentless, alternating two notes (played on a tuba!) that announce the killer shark’s arrival? Or think of “Rocky” (1976) without remembering how Bill Conti’s soaring trumpet theme made your heart race? 

The phenomenon known as typecasting has been practiced in Hollywood since its earliest days. Stars who excelled in certain kinds of roles were usually offered those kinds of parts repeatedly. To risk-averse studios, this simply made good business sense.

Though we live in the era of the multi-hyphenate and multi-tasker, we still get a boot out of personalities we know for one function, showing up in a totally unexpected context, and in doing so revealing an otherwise hidden side—and hidden talents.  When a non-actor appears on-screen there is a moment of held breath. Will he or she be…good? After all, acting is hard. Acting takes sweat and years of training, whether in techniques by Stella Adler, Lee Strasberg, or doing improv on weeknights for decades, with no break in sight. And yet, from out of the blue, a soccer star, jazz musician, or gossip columnist will cruise onto the set and turn in the performance of a seasoned vet.

They say the customer is always right — but not always right away. For instance, sometimes it takes a while for movie audiences to recognize just how special a film really is. When it premieres, there’s a barely audible thud, and very little box office.  The culprit could be poor distribution, half-hearted promotion, a storyline slightly ahead of its time, the ire of some influential critic with digestive trouble, or any combination of the above. A surprising number of now-classic films either just broke even, or actually lost money on initial release. Here are 10 classics from my list that fall into this category. 

Film lets us move in with idealized families, the families we would happily join if they were real and would have us. Here, we have gathered our favorites into one warm, harmonious place. We can smell the cookies baking from here…

From the socially unacceptable, to the downright deviant, taboo topics make for dramatic movies. What we can’t, and wouldn’t, do in life, film plays out for us, revealing not only the forbidden acts, but also the hidden motivations behind them.